Date: 14th of January 2008

Hi All,

Bacon, scrambled eggs, hashbrows, grilled tomoatos, and sausages greeted us this morning for the weekly Monday morning cookup. There was no snow overnight and we awoke to clear sunny skies – pity it was a day off snow for everyone.

Today has been tagged “Super Monday as it’s been jam packed with day off activities. It all started this morning when the group headed off for the hour’s drive down to Kelowna to hit the Orchard Park Mall for some serious retail therapy. We arrived at 11.00am and then the crazy shopping fest began with the crew scattering in different directions all in search of different items. Lunch was at the mall so as expected everyone congregated in the food court and stuffed themselves silly on the various type of Canadian junk food. Sorry Mum and Dad but there would have been a mutiny if I’d made everyone take a pack lunch!

For some of the group the shopping spree finished at 1.00pm as they were group one scheduled to head to the trampolining just around the corner from the mall. Phil and Matesy’s vans headed for an hour of jumping, flipping and hucking. They headed home just after 2.00pm as Min and Beggsy arrived with their vans and group two. This group also spent an hour do the same hucking but as usual trying to outdo the first group. They finished just after 3.00pm and hopped in the vans and headed for home. The final group – three was Chris’ van and consisted of the people who did not want to tramp and preferred to stay shopping. Chris left the mall just after three and also headed for Silver Star but not before a stop at 7/11. Double and Supa Gulps were popular and as usual the bets were on to see who could drink a full 2 liters of soft drink before getting back to the mountain. There were a few who managed the feat but they looked pretty green when they arrived and got out of the car.

The next couple of hours were spent chilling out back at the lodge. The snow started to fall just after 3.00pm and really came down for few hours. The wind picked up which is rare here, normally you don’t get much more than a breeze and started a good old white out.

Dinner was chicken lasagna with Caesar salad and garlic bread and chocolate ice cream for dessert.

Straight after dinner it was another mass room clean session with all the rooms getting a good overhaul. It still amazes me that most of these kids are happy to live in such mess and what I’m finding the funniest this year is the girls seems to be worse than the boys. The boys rooms are definitely the smelliest but the girls outdo them quite easily with the amount of crap they leave on the floor.

At 7.45 the final activity of Super Monday was Curling down at the Vernon Curling Centre. We loaded up the vans once again and headed off on the short drive down to Vernon. For those not quite sure what Curling is, it’s basically like lawn bowls on ice. We arrived at 8.30 and had to wait for 10 minutes until the games finished and then we had the entire venue to ourselves. For 90% of people had never seen let alone had a go at Curling so it was a real experience for them and once they all got over the laughter of seeing the ‘sweeps’ they were into it. We’ll put up all the photos and video of the night tomorrow but for a little taster, the photo of the day today was taken at Curling tonight.  At 10.15pm we all loaded back in the vans and headed for home arriving at 10.45pm and by the time we finally got everyone to bed it was quite late (hence the late update tonight)

Just a short update as there was no on snow training today.

Until tomorrow,

Stowie